I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to encoding beacon symbols for more efficient decoding and resolution thereof in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as, for example, voice, data, and so on. Typical wireless communication systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing available system resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power, . . . ). Examples of such multiple-access systems may include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, and the like.
Generally, wireless multiple-access communication systems may simultaneously support communication for multiple mobile devices. Each mobile device may communicate with one or more base stations via transmissions on forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from base stations to mobile devices, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from mobile devices to base stations. Further, communications between mobile devices and base stations may be established via single-input single-output (SISO) systems, multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, and so forth.
MIMO systems commonly employ multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. The antennae can relate to both base stations (e.g. access points) and mobile devices (e.g. access terminals) in one example, where the base station can provide communication channels to the mobile devices. Base stations can transmit beacon signals for interpretation by the mobile devices in an attempt to identify the base station and/or a transmission carrier or sector thereof. The beacon symbols are sent at a given time in a superframe thus giving way to beacon collision as the number of in-range sectors increases beyond a number of available subcarriers. Additionally, as more information is desired to transmit in a beacon and as the number of transmitting devices grows in a given area, mobile devices can become overloaded with beacon messages to decode and can often drop the messages it cannot handle.